Ares #2
I could get out, if I wanted. I could rip through the rope.
The most important thing is that I can relax into it.
I have to breathe super fucking carefully, because here in the dark, I only have memories to look at. If I don’t want to look at those memories—and I never do—there’s nothing to do but feel my feelings, which have gone to war against each other.
Relief tries to choke out shame, which tries to carpet-bomb pleasure, which tries to shoot tear gas at guilt. It feels horrible. It feels like giving up.
It feels like giving in.
It feels like everything.
And then it feels like an exhale, the painful tightness in my muscles ebbing away. Whatever I’ve been holding on to releases in my wrists and my hands and my knees.
Pav’s hand skims my ass again.
“That’s right,” he says. “Good.”
Then something else slides across my ass. Something solid. Wooden.
Pav’s favorite paddle.
It lifts away.
“Breathe out,” he says, and the paddle comes back down.
No idea—no idea at all—how long we spend doing this, because the feelings I’ve been so furious with and so busy fighting fall away or dissolve into the air. They go somewhere else. They’re not mine anymore.
Pav is the one swinging the paddle or his hand or at one point a leather strap, but now that I’m in it, I’m participating as much as he is. Accepting all of it. Taking everything he gives.
The part of my brain that’s obsessed with feeling nothing shuts off, thank God, and then I’m a sparking mass of body and breath and sensation. I can’t tell if Pav swings harder or if I just feel it more.
Either way.
It’s good.
It’s good.
Then I’m making a disappointed whining sound in a sudden silence, and Pav’s murmuring oh, that’s enough, and then he’s helping me off the desk and turning me to face him and pulling me in close.
My boxers are gone, so his clothes are electric on my bare skin.
I rest my head on his shoulder and tremble. Can’t stop it.
Can’t stop the urge to talk, either, but I try.
That’s the only danger of these meetings. I could forget to shut the fuck up. I could say it was all my fault. I could say he almost died because of me. I could say I was so scared, I was so scared.
“Castle sucked,” I blurt out instead, and wipe my face on the shoulder of Pav’s shirt. “I don’t want to live in a castle.”
“Well, why would you?”
“Place was way too old. Too many roads. And grounds. Who needs grounds other than rich fucks?”
“Richer fucks, probably.”
“You’re a rich fuck.”
Pav laughs. “So are you.”
“Not biologically.”
“Yes, biologically. Do you know what biologically means, Ares?”
“Yeah. No. I don’t know anything.”
Next thing I know—that I actually know—I’m under a desk, the air close and safe, boxed in by Pav, who’s sitting in a chair, I think.
The toe of his shoe brushes my knee, and then the shoe pats to the carpet, and then his foot is firmly between my legs, nestled up under my—aching, leaking—cock.
Takes a little maneuvering with my arms still tied behind my back, but conditions are conditions, and I want his cock in my mouth.
He slides his fingers into my hair and holds my head in place while I get my balance on his foot.
Then—his zipper.
Then—the crush of fabric.
And then his cock is at my lips, just like I wanted, and I open my mouth and take it in and hold it, Pav’s hand cradling my head.
“Take your time,” he says.
For a while, I just drift.
I think about absolutely nothing.
I find the amount of give in the rope and rest in it.
I’ve just started to move mindlessly against Pav’s foot, keeping his cock in my mouth and letting him hold my head where it needs to be—when there’s a buzzing sound above me.
I don’t care about it. Nothing to do with me. My job is to come, and make Pav come, and that’s it.
But…
It’s close.
It’s right above my head.
It’s a phone.
Pav’s hand flexes in my hair.
I concentrate harder. I can do two things at once, if I concentrate, so I really focus on rolling my hips against his foot and sucking him off very gently, which is part of the game we play. I have to come like this—conditions—but so does he.
His grip on my head tightens, and he moves, which means I have to readjust.
“What?” he says, in a tone he’s never used with me.
There’s the low hum of a voice through a phone.
“No,” says Pav.
More low humming.
“I’m not getting involved with that bullshit. You know that, Chris.”
I’m about halfway up now. Aware enough to know that I could latch on to the sound of Pav’s voice. I could focus on the phone, and then I might be able to hear what the other person is saying.
I could learn something about Pav.
Know something about Pav.
But that would change things.
I would know.
Not everything, but something.
And knowing something would make this real.
Everything I fought off earlier—everything I let him take away—pushes back in at the edges of my mind, like a dark cloud over a far-off horizon.
“Do you understand what no means?” Pav asks.
The warning in his voice isn’t for me, but the hairs on the back of my neck stand up anyway. If I’m smart, I’ll let it clue me in. I’ll notice it like I should have noticed the meditation music.
That part of his life—whatever part of his life this phone call represents—isn’t for me.
I stop listening and focus on his cock in my mouth and his foot underneath me and moving my hips so I can get more contact, and more, and more, until—a long time later—the pressure builds enough for me to come, my whole body throbbing within the ropes.
Pav’s cock twitches in my mouth, and then he’s coming, too.
“Yes,” he says above me. “Good. Yes.”
After that, it’s quiet.
Pav unties the ropes and takes each of my hands in turn and stretches out my arms for me. My wrists. My fingers.
Then he takes me elsewhere.
Bathroom. Bathtub. He really trusts me not to peek at him, because when it comes time for Pav to wash my hair, he just says cover your eyes and I do it.
He puts the blindfold on for me when he’s done toweling me off, then says good.
And then—
I don’t know. I drink a glass of water. I sit on a soft chair.
“Pardon?” Pav says.
“I didn’t say anything.”
There’s a beat of silence that seems to mean yes, you did.
I don’t remember saying anything.
I definitely didn’t say Can I stay here?
I didn’t say that.
I definitely haven’t said that when Pav takes me back down two flights of stairs to a very familiar doormat, takes my collar off, and pats the side of my face.
“Do you need me to call you a car?”
“No,” I say slowly. “No, I have…” Do I have a car? Yes. I drove here. I got here. “I have a car.”
“I’ll call you a car.”
“I have a car. I brought myself here from Dulles. Rental.”
“Where did you leave the car?”
“At the house. The clubhouse.”
“I’m calling a car for you.”
“I said rental.”
“I’ll have someone take the rental back to Dulles,” he says, his voice soft with levity—delight?—and I just know, I know, he’s smiling.
I want to argue with him so bad.
I don’t want to drive myself home. I should let someone else drive me home.
“Okay.”
Pav pats my face again. “Text me when you get home.”
“I will.”
This time when he leans in, I know he kisses my temple. I know it. “Good boy.”
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